Creating characters to fight climate change

7 November 2018

Climate change is one of the biggest crises facing our planet, and it requires all of us to help curb emissions of the greenhouse gasses responsible for global warming.

For each of us to do our part, we need access to clear information about our own climate impact. But the science around global warming can be daunting and it is hard for people to know where to start, even when they’re eager to help.

To overcome this challenge, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change launched the Climate Neutral Now campaign in 2015, which consists of three steps:

Measure your climate footprint;

Reduce it as much as possible;

Offset the unavoidable ones with UN-certified credits.

UN Climate Change recently relaunched a website that offers concise information that allows visitors to calculate their own household emissions. It includes an e-commerce platform where visitors can purchase certified emission reduction (CER) credits to offset their remaining emissions. The UN e-commerce platform sends the money paid towards these credits directly to the accounts of the eco-friendly project(s) selected (solar energy schemes, cook stoves, reforestation, etc.) in developing countries.

To draw people in, the website incorporates a fun and accessible quiz that allows users to find their “Climattitude” ­– or climate attitude – represented by an illustrated character. As part of an awareness campaign, UNFCCC worked with QUO to conceptualize five distinctive Climattitude characters, with the goal of giving a friendly face to a serious topic. Most of all, the characters needed to be relatable and non-judgmental, as on our journey to a carbon neutral future, each of us is starting from a different place and has a different mindset. The QUO team developed the concept of characters based on elements from the natural world to represent each attitude – incorporating snow, wind, stone, grass and water. Two weeks after the start of the campaign, these characters have so far driven 24.5K page views on the website, which UN Climate Change considers a great success!

When site visitors discover which of the five Climattitudes represents them, they can share the character via social media platforms, thus raising more awareness on the subject and boosting visitor numbers to the site, with the ultimate goal of encouraging real change.